College welcomes 23 new faculty members for 2019-2020 academic year
Laurie Achin
Job title and department: Lecturer, Department of Communication Sciences and Special Education
Research specialties: Deaf education, American Sign Language, deaf studies, and teaching ASL
Before COE: Achin has been teaching since 2001, beginning with a fellowship at Model Secondary School for the Deaf in Washington, D.C., on the Gallaudet Campus. She was a deaf educator for R.E.A.D.S Collaborative Deaf and Hard of Hearing program and has taught Family Sign Language Program and ASL. Achin was as a full-time visitor ASL faculty at Northeastern University before moving to Watkinsville, Georgia, to join the ASL team at UGA.
Brandee Appling
Title and department: Assistant professor, Department of Counseling and Human Development Services
Research specialties: School counselor collaboration, school counseling strategies to enhance student success in P-16, African American motherhood in counselor education, racial identity development of African American adolescent males, and using critical theories to engage marginalized populations in the research
Before COE: Prior to UGA, Appling was an assistant professor in counselor education and supervision at Auburn University. Before her professorship, she was a K-12 school counselor in Gwinnett County for 11 years.
Kadir Bahar
Title and department: Assistant professor, Department of Educational Psychology
Research specialties: Creative problem solving, mathematical creativity, and talent development
Before COE: Previously, Bahar was a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and served as the coordinator of graduate programs in gifted education. He also directed youth programs including Youth in College and STEM for Young Scholars.
Michael Barger
Title and department: Assistant professor, Department of Educational Psychology
Research specialties: Motivation, STEM education, parenting, teaching, and student beliefs
Before COE: Barger was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Psychology Department. There, he studied the role of parenting in students’ developing beliefs about mathematics.
Cameron Byerley
Title and department: Assistant professor, Department of Mathematics and Science Education
Research specialties: Teachers’ mathematical thinking
Before COE: Byerley taught calculus, conducted mathematics education research, and co-led a mathematics tutoring center at Colorado State University. She also taught high school before attending graduate school.
Rachel Cagliani
Title and department: Assistant professor, Department of Communication Sciences and Special Education
Research specialties: Applied behavior analysis, autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability, and augmentative and alternative communication for individuals with ASD and ID
Before COE: Prior to becoming an assistant professor at UGA, Cagliani worked in Georgia public schools as an elementary special education teacher and as a postdoctoral fellow at UGA.
David Chiesa
Title and department: Clinical assistant professor, Department of Language and Literacy Education
Research specialties: Language testing and language assessment literacy, language teacher cognition and development, second language writing, and quantitative and qualitative research methods
Before COE: Chiesa was the English language testing and assessment specialist for the Ministry of Public Education of the Republic of Uzbekistan. In this position, he created a task force—The National English Assessment Team—to write the national standards for language learning and provide training on the principles and practices of language testing and assessment.
Amanda Ferster
Title and department: Assistant professor, limited term, Department of Educational Psychology and assistant research scientist and assistant director at Georgia Center for Assessment
Research specialties: The intersection of cognition and assessment, and applied psychometrics
Before COE: Previously, Ferster served as a psychometrician and assessment specialist for university affiliated assessment research centers (Georgia Center for Assessment at the University of Georgia; Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation at the University of Kansas) and the Georgia Department of Education.
Sycarah Fisher
Title and department: Assistant professor, Department of Educational Psychology
Research specialties: Minority adolescent mental health and substance use, school-based mental health and substance use interventions in low resource settings, and implementation science
Before COE: Fisher was an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky. After graduating, she worked as a school psychologist.
Maureen Flint
Title and department: Assistant professor, Department of Lifelong Education, Administration, and Policy
Research specialties: Qualitative methodology, feminist and critical materialist theories, race and gender in higher education, and visual and multimodal research methods
Before COE: Flint was a graduate research assistant in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of Alabama. She also worked as a workshop facilitator with the National Sustained Dialogue Institute, leading multiday workshops on dialogue skills and conflict resolution on college campuses across the country. Before returning to school for her Ph.D., Flint worked as an administrator in college student affairs.
Andrew Jackson
Title and department: Assistant professor, Department of Career and Information Studies
Research specialties: Technology and engineering education, design-based learning, design cognition, soft robotics, and self-regulation, motivation and self-efficacy in STEM
Before COE: Jackson was a postdoctoral associate at Yale University, where he was responsible for managing the implementation and evaluation of a National Science Foundation project for soft robotics education.
Diann Jones
Title and department: Clinical assistant professor, Department of Lifelong Education, Administration, and Policy
Research specialties: Inclusionary practices in online learning environments, the role of leadership in institutionalizing community engagement, and managing change and transitions
Before COE: Prior to her position as clinical assistant professor, Jones held the same title as a limited-term faculty member for two years. Before enrolling in UGA’s Ph.D. program, she was an insurance executive.
Hannah Krimm
Title and department: Assistant professor, Department of Communication Sciences and Special Education
Research specialties: Dyslexia, language impairment, and professional education
Before COE: Krimm was completing her doctoral training at Vanderbilt University before UGA. Prior to that, she practiced speech-language pathology in a public school system.
Alison Morrison
Title and department: Clinical assistant professor, Department of Communication Sciences and Special Education
Research specialties: Clinical audiology, pediatric audiology, and early hearing detection and intervention (EHDI)
Before COE: Morrison was the associate director of inpatient pediatric audiology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Missy Moore
Title and department: Assistant professor, Department of Counseling and Human Development Services
Research specialties: Research methods and management, stress and burnout, counselor preparation and development, and mental health disparities in diverse populations
Before COE: Moore worked as a professional counselor serving individuals, couples, and families in schools and agency settings. She also worked for the Center for Educational Measurement and Evaluation at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where she specialized in community-engaged research, program evaluation, and assessment of educational outcomes associated with state-wide initiatives.
Amy Peterson
Title and department: Lecturer, Department of Communication Sciences and Special Education
Research specialties: Interpreting field in mental health setting, interpreting field in education setting, and teaching ASL as L1
Before COE: Peterson was a state-wide community coordinator for the Office of Deaf Services, Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities.
Chitra Pidaparti
Title and department: Clinical assistant professor, Department of Educational Psychology
Research specialties: Interdisciplinary assessment, assessment and treatment of neurodevelopmental disorders in children and adolescents, autism spectrum disorders evaluation and treatment, learning disabilities assessment and intervention, teaching clinical skills, and providing clinical supervision
Before COE: Pidaparti previously worked as a licensed psychologist in Virginia and Indiana and has specialized training in interdisciplinary diagnostic assessment and treatment of children and youth with neurodevelopmental, learning, behavioral, and/or emotional problems.
Leslie Rech
Title and department: Clinical assistant professor, Department of Educational Theory and Practice
Research specialties: Children’s drawing in language arts curricula, arts and creativity in elementary education, arts and creativity in Pre-K through fifth grade STEM teaching, and material and embodies pedagogies
Before COE: Rech previously taught visual arts and design at South Carolina State University. She’s been engaged in a wide range of scholarly presentations, publications, and exhibits of her artwork. The majority of her research over the last five years has been focused on arts and creative practices in early childhood and elementary education.
Emily Rosenzweig
Title and department: Assistant professor, Department of Educational Psychology
Research specialties: Students’ motivation to learn, designing and testing interventions to enhance motivation, and focus on STEM fields and in middle school, high school, and college
Before COE: Prior to UGA, Rosenzweig was completing her National Science Foundation Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Yiran Su
Title and department: Assistant professor, Department of Kinesiology
Research specialties: Sports marketing, branding in sports business, and the influence of identity on consumer behavior
Before COE: A graduate of Temple University, Su spent five years in Australia before coming to the U.S. While abroad, she received her masters and bachelor’s degrees. In the past, she served as an external brand strategy consultant for a professional basketball team and was responsible for building fan clubs and digital marketing channels in China.
Megan Wongkamalasai
Title and department: Assistant professor, Department of Mathematics and Science Education
Research specialties: Early elementary STEM education, design and art as a context for mathematics learning, and spatial approaches to mathematics instruction
Before COE: Wongkamalasai conducted education research focused on language development and different domains of mathematics learning for eight years. She also led the professional development of K-5 teachers.
Elizabeth Wurzburg
Title and department: Clinical assistant professor, Department of Educational Theory and Practice
Research specialties: Justice-oriented teacher education, the production of teacher subjectivity, working lives of women teachers, post structural and feminist theories, and neoliberalism
Before COE: Wurzburg was a clinical assistant professor of early childhood and elementary education at Georgia State University from 2015-19. She previously served as an elementary school teacher.
Andrea Zawoyski
Title and department: Assistant research scientist, Center for Autism and Behavioral Education Research
Research specialties: Diagnostic assessment for autism spectrum disorder, clinical supervision in applied behavior analysis and school psychology, and behavioral consultation in schools
Before COE: Zawoyski completed her postdoctoral training in integrated health psychology and developmental psychology at Cherokee Health Systems in East Tennessee where she provided behavioral health services to children and adolescents in a rural, integrated pediatric primary care setting. While there, Zawoyski worked on a project aimed at increasing access to care and decreasing the amount of time families had to wait for diagnostic decisions.